When X Equals Marylou collects stories about photographers, balding men, ghost chasers, doppelgangers, bibliophiles and dystopian subversives, to name but a few. It’s a mix not only of characters, but of time, and of worlds—moving from Russia to Hungary to Canada, from small towns to big cities to the interior of dreams, from suburbia to welfare offices to interrogations to Alcoholics Anonymous to the Library of Alexandria.

This new collection, evocative of Jonathan Lethem and Paul Auster, is a kind of beguiling miscellany, with each story opening another door, offering another glimpse, all in the hope that readers come away not so much with the experience of having read one book, but many. Threading through these stories, however, is a foreboding sense of the incongruities of life, and our desire to mathematize our responses to the bittersweet world around us.

Praise for When X Equals Marylou:

"I was absolutely floored by the quality of stories such as Tamas Dobozy’s When X Equals Marylou . . . easily equal to any story I’ve read."—PopMatters

"A brilliant collection. His sentences move like snakes—fluid, jabbing, biting."—Michael Turner, author of Hard Core Logo

Tamas Dobozy has lived in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Budapest, and now teaches English at Memorial University in Newfoundland. One of the stories from When X Equals Marylou is to be published in The Chicago Review.